Justice
June 4, 2020 -
Herbert Lee Wright passed away at age 92 last month in Arizona from complications related to the coronavirus. Though he doesn't appear prominently in U.S. history books, he played a critical role in shaping the modern Civil Rights Movement as the NAACP's national youth secretary from 1951 to 1962, defending students who participated in sit-ins and criticizing older leaders who wanted to end the protests.
June 3, 2020 -
As people took to the streets nationwide to condemn last week's Minneapolis police killing of George Floyd, they were met in many places by tear gas, which is banned from use in war but still deployed domestically by police for crowd control. The tear gas canisters fired in recent protests in Minneapolis and many other cities were made by Florida-based Safariland, whose products have also been controversially used against asylum seekers at the U.S.-Mexico border.
June 3, 2020 -
Stacked with appointments from Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis, the Florida Supreme Court is quickly overturning previous decisions that barred the death penalty for some defendants with intellectual disabilities and those who were sentenced by non-unanimous juries.
June 1, 2020 -
Poultry plants in Northwest Arkansas are seeing a surge in cases of the novel coronavirus. Worker advocates are demanding they be shut down, despite President Trump's executive order that they remain open.
June 1, 2020 -
Several chronic health conditions that disproportionately affect residents of Southern states are now considered potential risk factors for severe illness from COVID-19. As the country moves toward reopening, public health experts fear the pandemic could wreak havoc on vulnerable communities across the South.
May 24, 2020 -
Durham, North Carolina-based peace, labor, civil rights, and human rights activist and organizer Raymond Lee "Bro Ray" Eurquhart died on March 30. In this excerpt of a 2002 oral history interview, he recounts his early political education and organizing while serving in the U.S. Air Force during the Vietnam War.
May 21, 2020 -
Even before the novel coronavirus outbreak, social justice advocacy groups like Color of Change were fighting for free phone calls for the incarcerated. COVID-19 has raised the stakes.